Perfect Fit
by SprinkledKisses
Summary: The spur of the moment decision to spare her male clone on the Normandy was a bit out of character for the usually ruthless Shepard. Nobody but her knows why she did it nor why she insists on having him move in with her after the war. Least of all poor John who now has to navigate a new world of unspoken rules.
1. Chapter 1

"Where will he sleep?" Liara asks, looking around Anderson's (now Shepard's) apartment. Jane was lounging on her couch making a show of ignoring Liara and John awkwardly standing at the entrance with his few belongings in a duffle bag at his feet.

"I made up the other room, put a bed in there. If he wants more, he can get it himself." She is clearly baiting her, but Liara sighs and goes to look dragging John along.

Peeks into the small room to the right of her bathroom.

"Jane, wasn't that a closet before?" She yells into the other room and is ignored.

"I won't need much space," John mutters.

She turns to him, hands on her hips. Looks him over. He feels awkward, wearing an old (well, for him it was old), dirty teeshirt and sweats. His hair had grown out, his former stern buzz cut giving way to slightly curly red hair that had maddeningly chosen today to look wild and unkempt. He was also in desperate need of a shave.

Like always the weight of her kind gaze is too much. He glances down at his feet.

For reasons known only to her, Liara had been his most stalwart defender since Jane spared him on the Normandy and the more he liked her, the more awkward he felt. He was having a hard time finding the right words to say sorry. He had so little practice in interacting with people he was sure he would botch it, yet the longer it went unsaid the worse he felt.

"Are you sure John?" The way she speaks his name makes him look back up. It stirs something in him and he can't verbalize what. He just knows he wants to hear it more.

"Yeah. It's more than I ever expected. You have to agree it's better than an Alliance holding cell?"

She just looks at him, for what felt like minutes. Finally she says "Ok. Ok, John. Just...keep me in the loop? If you need anything, I'm here?"

He smiles at her, a forced, shaky smile.

"Of course. We'll have dinner together once I'm settled in…assuming Jane ehhh…allows it. Not sure she will give me much leeway in foreseeable future"

Liara looked at him strangely, about to say something. Instead she fisted her hands in his teeshirt, raised herself up on her tiptoes, and pressed her lips against his cheek. He almost jumped back with a start, but stopped himself. Liara wouldn't hurt him.

"Don't worry so much about Jane. She might keep you at distance initially, but she wants you in her life. Otherwise she wouldn't have pulled so many strings to have you released to her responsibility. So try to be happy, ok?"

"Yeah, thank you..."

With that she leaves him, stranded in his new home, a _please stay_ on the tip of his tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

He feels her behind him at the door to his new bedroom. He catches himself before turning around in a startle when he senses her. He turns, as casually as he can fake it, sees her standing at the doorway less than an arm's length away.

"It's a bit Spartan," he says, his mouth stretched in a lopsided smile, his eyes traveling over the utilitarian pressed-wood dresser with the blonde veneer, the bed that's just a box spring and mattress on a steel frame. Commander Jane Shepard clearly did not give a fuck.

She stands in the doorway and when he realizes he's wringing his hands he drops them stiffly to his sides, where they proceed, as if of their own volition, to start tapping his thighs in a silent staccato rhythm. "I have some credits from Liara, if it's ok to, you know, dress it up a bit," he tells her, tap-tap-tapping.

She just looks at him then and his eyes, practiced at the move, flicker over her shoulder to focus beyond her again.

Her eyes are burning little points into his forehead. He can't usually feel someone's eyes on him so hard but then again he doesn't deal with women very often. Women who are his…sister? Mother? Progenitor? It was easier before, with the armor, guns and angry words between them.

"I know I'm handsome but you don't need to stare at me that damn hard."

A weak desperate joke that deserved nothing more than a disdainful turn of her back, leaving him standing there like a fool.

Instead, Jane finally smiles. It is bare, but it is a smile, and it sets off an answering smile in him like a chemical reaction.

"It's a bit late, but I still have time to go out," he suggests, glancing at her throat, unconsciously looking for the scar he put there with a combat knife. "Get another bed or… whatever you think is okay."

Jane's shoulders tighten in a shrug. "I'd rather just order what you need. Companies trip over themselves to send me free stuff so you can keep your credits." she says at last.

He nods. "Right, right. Whatever you like."

He realizes he's staring at her neck. The thought creeps in that he hadn't seen the scar in a while and he wonders how it is healing. And then he realizes he is staring and Jane is staring back, her pink mouth twisted in annoyance.

He nods again. "Right. Sorry." And he slips past her and out of the room, palming his short beard and feeling the corners of his mouth pulling down into a deep frown.


	3. Chapter 3

He feels fidgety and action was always the best way too settle his nerves. He isn't sure how Jane would react to him taking over her gym so he goes to her kitchen. He can do simple and hearty military style food so he decides to try his hand a cooking something simple, eggs and sausages. Impossible to screw up, right?

She comes to join him when the smell of his cooking starts filling the air. She sits at the table watching him absentmindedly. Even then her green eyes weigh heavily on him. He does his best to ignore it as he serves her a plate.

She's very quiet as they eat dinner together and he doesn't like the sound of himself babbling so he's quiet, too. She finally speaks in the middle of the meal, interrupting the clatter of their utensils, "You made breakfast for dinner." He had opened his mouth to answer when she added, "Dad liked making me breakfast for dinner too."

…what the hell is he supposed to say to that? He feels like that isn't a normal conversation topic but he doesn't know enough about day to day conversations to be sure. He feels like he is navigating a minefield that might not even be there.

They're almost done when he musters enough courage to say, "Liara said she wanted to take me around and see the Citadel… as a tourist this time around. If that's okay with you."

She shrugs, turning over her scrambled eggs with a fork.

"We were thinking tomorrow," he says.

She nods, not even trying to meet his eyes, which makes him both grateful and anxious. It's like she's avoiding all possible contact with him and it makes him feel like he's doing something wrong but he doesn't know what.


	4. Chapter 4

A month passes.

She simple ignores him most of the time. And when she does speak to him it's minimal and strictly functional. They settle into a predictable routine.

Most days she's…busy. Speeches, awards, committees, inquiry boards. Every few days she spends the night at Liara's apartment. He feels a strange mix of relief and loneliness on those nights. Her silent presence could be suffocating but being alone brought out his own demons especially when he tried to sleep.

Her influence got him a low end role in C-sec (a desk job, they weren't willing to put a gun in his hands) that occupies him a few days a week. He isn't entirely sure how that went over with the Alliance high heads, but he likes keeping busy and Bailey is grouchy but mostly fair. Rest of the time he mostly stays at her apartment, reading, exercising, wasting time online, devouring as much information as he can. Better than a cell, but he is still going stir-crazy. Once a week Liara picks him up in the morning and he spends the day with her, wandering the Citadel and talking about everything. She doesn't treat him like a descartable tool or a leper and she is the only one who makes him feel tolerably human.

She can also read him like an open book so it doesn't long for her to ask what's eating away at him.

"Look" she says, as they sit down next to the Krogan Memorial "I can't help you if you don't talk to me."

"It's just..." he tries, frustrated that the words lodge in his throat."It's just-"

"I know," Liara says. "She's takes a while to warm up. I warned you."

"Yes," he says, exasperated. "I didn't. I didn't realize it'd be so...so-"

"Hard? Frustrating? The worst?" she sounds amused.

"Yes," he palms his forehead, which is all sweaty with anxiety from talking about Jane to her lover of all people.

Also, was she?...

Oh god, she was. She was leaning on him. Part of him wants to shy away from her but he is too shocked to brush her off. He isn't used to touching people. Not like this.

When she speaks, he feels her breath on his ear. he can't supress his shiver this time.

"Some of it is defensiveness. You did cut her throat once upon a time. Some of it is confusion. She wants you alive and in her life but still isn't sure what place to give you. It'll take time, but she'll come around," she then hits him with that damn adorable smile of hers again.

He swallows guiltily, looking into the distance. She stirs something in him, he can't fully understand it but it feels dangerous. "Yeah," he says, feeling aimless and adrift. Nobody told him navigating through civilian life would be this hard. As bad as working under Cerberus was at least it was clear what was expected of him. If it wasn't for the lingering dread of getting farmed for organs in case the original clone needed them sooner or later he might even have missed it.

There where so many rules now he can't comprehend, he can only feel them as a blind man stumbling through a maze.

She takes a moment to gather her thoughts before she speaks

"Jane can be hard to like, with all her showy anger and filthy mouth, but all of that is wrapped around a center of… warmth. She is phenomenally generous, fiercely protective, and loyal to the point of madness. Just…give her time."

He wants to correct her. He would have preferred showy anger to being treated as a ghost but there was so much tenderness in the Asari's tone when she spoke of Jane that another question popped up, unbidden.

"Are you sure you're OK with me living with her?"

He tried to say it lightly, sardonic or dry, affable, a bit dim, any of the deflecting tactics he'd ever seen used getting tangled up and he landed on either mournful or suspicious, he wasn't sure which.

She shot him that gorgeous little smile. She was either more cruel than he figured or she really was oblivious to the effect it had on him

"Yes John. It will do you good." She looked into the distance. "It will do both of you good."


	5. Chapter 5

Her bathroom is filled with good, ancient-smelling things that remind him of aged herbs, petrichor, the ozone burn of a storm. Nothing fruity or too floral, no saccharine strawberry or peach, and he finds the scents suit her – clary sage, bitter oakwood, tobacco flower, oakmoss, galbanum, other things he couldn't even pronounce. She has set up two more racks in the bathroom so she can organize her bottles better, but they still seem to build up, and the mirrored cabinet fills up with little perfume bottles, jars of more creams than he would know what to do with. He teases her about it once, but only once – "Are you planning on running a perfumery out of our bathroom?" – and when her face gets stormy-looking he shuts up, wishing he had just told her he really likes it.

They cut wide paths around each other at bedtime. He feels like he should breach the wall between them and offer her a goodnight hug, like a brother would, or maybe just press his knuckles into her scalp so she yelps and laughs and pushes him away, but the wall she's built around her is even more tangible than the one between her room and his. So he leaves her alone, they take their turns in the amazing jacuzzi in the main bathroom, and he disappears into her small gym, so when he comes in sweating, his cheeks colored up from the exercise, she's in her room with the door shut.

Two days of mostly silence after this, Jane decides to spend an afternoon listening to her music collection. He's at a desk he set up, reading a book on Earth's history he raided from her collection, when he glances over to see her cross-legged on the floor, absently examining an old CD. Other albums fan out on the floor around her and he decides to join her.

She tenses a bit as she hears him scooting his chair back across the floorboards and he comes up softly, getting down on his knees beside her, though not too close. "You like Successful Flea?" he says, nodding to indicate the album in her hands.

She shrugs. "In my teens."

He examines the other albums scattered around here. "Looks like you are quite an Unfaithful Sanctuary fan."

"My, uh." Her eyes flash up but stop short. "My mom was a big fan." She's almost managed to overcome the way her lower lip wobbles when she talks about her parents.

He's silent and goes through her collection piece by piece. He sweeps the Unfaithful Sanctuary aside and looks through the older CD's. They were impressively well taken care off. He knew these were considered valuable relics and that most people who owned them didn't actually play them to not wear them down. He finds one with a long haired, ghostly pale woman on the cover.

"Lilly Dimara?" says John, letting the disc slip out, catching it carefully by an index finger on the edge.

"Good choice," said Jane. "Put it in if you like."

He handles the disk delicately, slipping it down the tray and thumbing the switch and after a second the acoustic guitars float.

He listens for a while and Jane talks about Lilly (who was fairly well known 120 years ago), about her collection, apologetically explaining that her musical tastes ossified somewhere in the last century, but that he's welcome to play whatever he likes.

He finds himself rejoicing at how much she is saying. How much she is opening up to him. "I just love the fact the mighty Commander Shepard has a CD player. Do you also communicate with people through carrier pigeon?"

She huffs, the annoyed look in her face undermined by the hint of a smile that was creeping up.

"I'm not a medieval monk you ass. It's a family collection, I want to keep it going."

He grins, pleased at her teasing tone, pleased at the label of all things, and he flushes up all over, just enjoying being with her in the warmth of her living room, with the thick rug under their knees.

He brings his hand up with the intention of putting it on her shoulder, something easy that anyone would do, but she shies back sharply, her green eyes wide.

He sits back on his heels, his face suddenly slack as he regards her. He's done something wrong again, but he doesn't know why, and he doesn't know how to fix it. He sees her slipping away from him, the way her shoulders turn to block him and her hair slips down to hide her face.

She scoots back and scrambles up, careful of her feet and the albums still scattered around the floor. "Can you put those away? Thanks," she says, and then disappears into the kitchen, where he hears the water start running.

He sighs, gathers up the CDs and tucks them into the cabinet before returning to his desk. It bothers him much more than he cares to admit, the way he always botches any attempt to get closer to her.

He's not sure what he's doing wrong with Jane. He isn't sure what he felt from her. For her he wants to be all gentleness and brotherly concern and that worry he read is common to have for family, but the way she looks at him, sidelong, sighing, and the way she comes forward and then dances back over and over again – he just doesn't know. He will never replace her family, but he doesn't know what she wants him to be instead, or whether she does, in fact, want him to be anything.


	6. Chapter 6

Turns out amongst all that wrong he must have done something right because they spend that evening on the couch, quietly reading. She curls up on the opposite end, tucked into the corner, her knees up against her chest and her whole body sort of braced against the arm of the couch. Once she gets in that position she doesn't move for ages. He'll sense a small tremor in her and he'll get up to turn up the heat.

Even with the heat blazing, she's still trembling, and he doesn't know why she won't just take the afghan hanging over the back of the couch. So finally, unable to bear this shivering person next to him any longer, he takes the blanket himself, reaches over and drapes it over her. She freezes up but for once she doesn't protest and, being careful not to actually touch her, he tucks her in like a child.

She's biting her lip when he's done, but she's smiling, so he takes a chance and strokes her head, and for the briefest moment he feels the warm, soft texture of her hair before she ducks away.

"Sorry," he mutters and returns to his side of the couch. But her smile hasn't gone, not completely, anyway, and she curls into the afghan, eyes on her book and tooth in her lip but smiling. John's heart almost bursts.

Is this what family feels like?

She cooks for him the next day. From the cooler she takes a vacuum-packed piece of meat – a heart, he sees, too big to be anything but beef, split neatly in two, and she puts it into a glass bowl filled with salt water. She tucks it into the bottom of the fridge and washes her hands.

The next morning she's up earlier than him to rummage through her cabinets. He lies in bed, half-awake, listening to the cozy sound of doors opening and shutting and he rubs his face into the softness of his pillow. In a minute she pokes her head through the kitchen door and announces that they need to go shopping.

He drifts off and when he opens his eyes again she's kneeling on the floor at his bedside, swathed in coat, scarf, hat. He blinks to clear away the fog of sleep.

"It's going to take all day to cook," she whispers at him. "We need to go now."

He presses his face into his pillow again and his eyes flicker shut. "Mm, five more minutes." he says. He's awake enough to see her grin at him and she jumps to her feet, flings the word slugabed at him as she rips the covers from the bed. Awake and cold now he decides to get ready before she tries anything drastic.

After they come back she runs into the kitchen and he goes take the shower she didn't allow him time for before. After, he pads into the kitchen on his bare feet to see her at the stove caramelizing two onions, all slithery and slippery around her spoon. She enlists his help manhandling the skillet over the Dutch oven while she scrapes the onions in. He bites his lip and doesn't quite lean into her but lets her bump into his side when she's trying to help him tip up the skillet, and his laugh is a bit shivery but he doesn't think she notices.

She makes him a stew, onions and carrots and celery and potatoes and good browned heart meat, and she seasons it with salt and pepper and simple herbs. She tops the pot off with beef broth and plenty of the dry red wine. She mockingly asks if a toddler like him should be drinking. He shakes his head at her but laughs at the way she waggles her eyebrows at him.

It's that night, for the first time, both of them a bit tipsy on the rest of the wine and the success of the stew (and the heart, which was like the most butter-smooth steak John had ever eaten), that she comes him before going to bed and embraces him, gingerly. He's never tried to hug her because – well, it seemed selfish at the time and he can't bear it when she jerks away from him. But now her arms are around his waist, loosely clasped at his lower back, and he drops his nose to breathe in her fragrant hair, and he has to bite his tongue, hard, to keep from reacting, but he can't help the way his hands come up to her shoulder blades, trembling, on the verge of just crushing her to him.

But she pulls off and hurries to her room, avoiding his eyes, as if she was worried he'd seek them out.


	7. Chapter 7

She comes back from a public ceremony one afternoon to find him assembling a bookcase in her room. He'd been putting it off for weeks, but after yesterday he wanted to do something nice for her. Jane had begun to form quite a formidable collection of books after her semi-retirement and he knew she would appreciate more shelves to store them. And on his part he wanted to contribute a little to her home. Improve it a little with his presence there.

He hears the front door open and shut and the next moment she's standing in the door of her bedroom. He grins up at her from his seating position, but instead of – whatever he expected, her face goes white.

He just manages to get up from the floor before she thunders up to him and starts shrieking at him to get out get out. He tries to answer her, explain something, but she won't stop yelling at him, and he's trying to back out the door when she grabs him by the arm.

He startles so bad he actually drops the hammer, but she ignores it, half-pinning him against the wall (He had forgotten how strong she was) and growling something about no privacy, this is my room and he's not even sure, but he grabs back at her, his hand finding her forearm and clenching. She actually snarls, shakes him off, and he snaps back at her, something defensive, and then she's pushing him, actually pushing him out of the room.

The door closes behind him and the sound rings through the silent apartment.

He's still standing there a moment later when she comes out of the room in a flurry and makes a beeline for the front door. He reaches out to her, but she's out of the door before he can say a word.

His hands are shaking and he fights the urge to sink down into the nearest chair. Instead, he takes a few backwards steps, looks at the empty room in the aftermath, and lets his mind start to race.

He looks at his work desk, at a gift he started days ago still in the making. As he works his mind's eye goes back to their confrontation, watches her come in from the cold, into the room. Watches the red rise like flags in her cheeks as she pushes him, watches her yank away from his grasping hand, and he can suddenly see it. He can see her. He can see the her pushing him away, the way she snaps like a feral dog every time he lifts his hand in greeting, the display of teeth and the bristling fur. She doesn't want him to be in charge. She wants to be the one that pushes him against the wall. Needs to be, to feel like she's in control of something in her maelstrom life, because her default setting has been changed to self-defense and everything can look like a threat let alone the man who cut into her throat.

But at the same time he can see the turmoil and the hunger, the wanting, like a whirlpool, sucking him down. The need for him. And there's something horrible in the wanting and the needing. It's not like his own desire – he wants to fill every void in her life, be her friend, her brother, her – whatever she wants him to be. He wants to give everything. And she wants to take, but it's as if she doesn't know what it is she wants, as if she's going to swallow him whole, devour him.

He shudders and now he does sink into the nearest chair, bracing his elbows on his knees and clenching his hands together so they don't shake visibly.

It's never easy to really look at people and it's rarely good, the things he sees in them. But at least now he knows, and he can imagine what needs to be done, and a sliver of optimism flickers through the depths of him like light glinting off a silver minnow. He can fix this, he thinks. He swallows his anger and gets to work.

He's just finishing up at his desk when the front door opens. He stiffens up, turns around to see her come in and head straight for her room. At least she doesn't slam the doors this time.

He gives it a minute, letting her settle in, before he goes up to her bedroom door and knocks gently.

There is a stunning quiet inside and then the door shoots up and she is standing there blocking the entrance with her body and glaring up at him. "We're knocking now, are we?" she says.

"Jane, I'm sorry. I want to apologize for that, earlier. I didn't know it would bother you so much, although, uh, in retrospect I guess I should have."

Her jaw tenses. The apology isn't exactly mollifying her.

"Anyway, I want you to know I respect your privacy and the sanctity of your space. I just wanted… to improve it a tiny bit, putting that up. Maybe," he suggests, running a hand through his hair, "the plan could have been executed a little better."

She jerks her chin up and he sees her nostrils flare. "Yeah, maybe." But the tension eases on her shoulders and she folds her arms over her chest and waits.

He clears his throat. "Anyway, I, uh, have something for you. Consider it a good faith gift."

Her arms uncross and she takes what he's handing her – a pocket-sized in scale replica of the Normandy. Not amazingly detailed, but recognizable.

"I noticed you have a few models of Turian and Asari ships and such," he shrugs, "and, uh, I've been working on this for a while and finished it after you left, always liked working with wood. I figured you might like it." He leaves it at that, fighting the urge to justify the gift, watching the way her mouth relaxes a bit.

She looks up at him holding his crude gift overly carefully, and at last she says, sounding a little stilted, "Thank you."

And then she's stepping back, pulling open the door, and inviting him in with a nod. "Wanna finish setting it up? I'll clean up afterwards." She says and turns her back on him while he quietly comes in.

The closer he gets the more prickly she becomes. But something in her is tugging at him insistently and he's not sure anymore whether he should ignore it.


	8. Chapter 8

She comes home from Liara's one afternoon and he can smell something else on her skin, in her hair, as she passes by his desk. A dark and complex scent, something he didn't recognize.

"That's a new perfume," he remarks, and her eyes dart to his, connecting for an electric instant until John's eyes jump away.

"It's Liara's," she smiles past him. "I forgot my toiletry kit."

"I noticed."

"Yeah, and you know, I think she liked it," she said. "Once she got over my forgetfulness." She punctuates the last word with a fluid, affected wave of her hand. "I was thinking, John," she says, and she motions towards her bedroom and she doesn't stop, so he follows her to the threshold of her room. "I was thinking about plans for Christmas."

She's unzipping her backpack and it gets stuck. He watches her yank at it without taking it off.

"And I was wondering what you wanted. It's still a ways off, but give it some thought, okay?" She says.

She struggles with the zip, pulling it back and forth, and finally she steps back and says irritably, "Will you help me with this already?"

He comes forward immediately and she spins almost pressing her back into his hands. He slowly works the fabric out of the teeth of the zipper. It takes him a while and she watches him over her shoulder, while he resolutely keeps his eyes on the zipper.

He hesitates. "You can choose. Whatever you want to do, that's what we'll do."

She's pulling away then and his body follows her for the briefest moment as if clinging by magnetic force. And she sits down on the edge of the bed, heavily so it bounces a bit.

"That's the thing. What if I choose to spend it with Liara?...as a couple?" she asks, staring up at him.

Something in the careful blankness of her stare tells him she's feeling defensive, even a bit hostile, and he just does the one thing that comes to mind, sinks down to his knees in front of her and looks at her folded hands.

"If you want to go to Liara's, then that's what you'll do, I absolutely understand why you'd want your privacy." he tells her.

"You'll be alone."

He smiles. "I'm practiced at being alone."

Her hands unfold and reach out. He forces himself to stay still.

"You make it sound like a skill," she says, and her hands are cradling his head, and his eyelids are fluttering shut.

"It's, uh."

"But if you prefer being alone, I can understand that."

Her hands loosen their hold and his breath hitches and he says all in a rush, "Oh it's not that I like it, it's…."

"Are you sure?" The defensiveness has faded. Her voice is all concern. "I feel like you could use some space. I'm around all the time, you know, getting in your hair. I…I don't want you to see me as your jailer. It might be good if I left for a week. Or two. So you can have the apartment to yourself… maybe bring someone over?"

There's a hurt edge to her voice she tries to suppress. His heart is racing. He doesn't know what to do.

Her fingers are combing through his hair and he's hunching into it a bit, hoping she doesn't notice.

"I've been kind of uh…cruel to you," she admits to him, tugging her hands through his much too-long hair. "I knew I was gonna be messed up after… after everything."

"You haven't been cruel. If you hadn't offered me this home I – I don't know where I'd have gone. Almost certainly would still be in a cell somewhere"

She doesn't answer, and he resists the urge to keen against her arm as she thumbs his earlobe gently.

"I guess I'm just trying to say I know how much you sacrificed for me to come stay with you," he says. "I know it isn't easy to have me here."

"John…"

She starts to trail down, stroking his neck. Then her hands start to ever so gently pull his face towards hers.

_This is wrong_

He's suddenly breaking away, getting up on his feet, hoping he's not visibly shaken. He doesn't dare to look upon her face.

All his instincts are screaming at him the same thing. _RUN_.

And then he's fleeing, locking himself in the bathroom and sitting on the edge of the jacuzzi to think, the whir of the fan filling his ears, the golden pressure of her fingers imprinted on his skin.


	9. Chapter 9

He expected anger after he came out of the bathroom that night. Or an apology. He expected anything outside of what her reaction was. Nothing. She pretended nothing happened.

The next few days the event hangs over him like a dark cloud. But she doesn't bring it up. Nothing has changed in their routine. She wasn't even freezing him out.

Part of him wants to talk with her and confront her but mostly he is just happy. The precarious routine they have is precious to him and doesn't know how to even start that conversation. Maybe it was all in his head and he just read the situation wrong. Yes, that's it.

She crawls onto the couch with him one evening and stretches out and then, unceremoniously but self-consciously so, pushes her bare feet into his lap.

She becomes aware of his look, the weight of his eyes, and without any preamble she meets them.

She turns back to her book, smiling, and he to his, barely able to breathe. And for a long long time they sit in silence and stillness until she starts rubbing her flexing feet together so her cool heels press into his thigh.

"My feet are cold," she complains at last and he takes a look at her, not quite in her eyes because he hasn't got the courage up yet. But he folds his book over the arm of the couch and, not quite believing she'd wants him to do it, takes her icy feet in his hands. When she doesn't protest, he begins scrubbing them briskly between his palms until the pink comes back.

"Ooh, that tickles," she says after a minute, not exactly smiling.

His eyebrows jerk up. So he presses firmer, not scrubbing so much as rubbing, asking, "How's this? Better?" and her mouth tips up a little bit. And then he's digging his thumbs into the little arch of her foot, into the hollow behind her ankle, and when his fingers wrap around her heel and turn circles into the flesh there she actually squirms down a little bit into the couch and a warm, contented sound escapes her.

"Mmmmm."

He's acutely aware of her eyes on him. Eyes have such a weight, he finds, even when he's avoiding meeting them, and hers are particularly prickly, like she's assessing him, slicing him open, turning things over to get a look at their glistening undersides. But he's aware of her contentedness, too, and that, combined with the way her toes curl and flex in his large, warm hands, sends the warmth rushing through him.

She takes advantages of his foot rubs regularly after that, and he doesn't care that he's not getting any reading done or that she never reciprocates. She wants and he's eager to give, though he doesn't want to examine too closely what he gets out of it; he imagines himself folding her to his chest and – and it stops there. He settles down each evening on his end of the couch and waits for her to join him, for her feet to work their way into his lap. It's often enough that she doesn't need the cold-feet excuse anymore and she'll sink down into the couch and swing her legs over his, wiggling her toes at him, and he'll grin and twist his hands around her heel so she squirms and sighs.

Occasionally she'll settle down and pillow her cheek on his thigh, and the first time he was so hesitant to touch her that it almost didn't happen, but then he allowed his fingers to trail down to her warm back and she purred into his knee.

It's late one night and for once she's working on something in her room. So he's laid out on the couch, a book on Turian history propped open on his stomach, when she comes out and pads over sleepily. He glances up and tenses to make room for her at the end but she stops him with a hand on his belly and nestles in behind him.

John goes rigid from his jaw down at the sudden contact, as she stretches out in the nook between his long warm body and the back of the couch. She presses her face into the comfortable hollow where his ribs terminate, and she rubs her cheek into his soft blue shirt, tucking her chin down, bring her knees up a bit next to his strong legs. Her hands fold and tuck between her thighs.

He's stopped breathing by now. And for a long while he stays like that, the end of the book's spine digging into his ribs as he watches her fall asleep. She's sleeping and he's just buzzing with the contact, trying not to stare at her jaw hooked neatly into where his belt cinches over the jut of his hipbone and he wonders, pitifully, whether he could stretch without waking her, stretch and relieve the tension corkscrewing his muscles tight, and whether in stretching the hem of his shirt might ride up and press his hot skin to her cool cheek.

Instead, he folds his book and gently, very gently sets it onto the floor, hoping not to jar her with any sudden movement, and he folds one arm wing-like against his ribs and with the other reaches out to stroke her hair.

She doesn't jerk away. Her eyes don't flash up at him; her face doesn't turn down in a scowl. She actually turns her face into his hand, rubs her cheek against his belly. His heart does a little flip-flop as she curls next to him, her knee slipping over his ankle.

She squirms a bit and he's not sure, actually, whether she's really asleep and he hopes she's awake, that she's consciously allowing his friendly, gentle touch, because that would be progress for once. He lets his hand go still in her hair and she settles down again, her cheek pressed into his hip bone. If she stays that way she'll have corduroy print striped into her cheek. He chuckles softly at the thought.

It jars her and she's moving again and suddenly she's nuzzling into his groin, which stops the chuckle in the middle of his throat. It stops everything. For a moment he wonders if he actually felt what he felt but then she's pushing into him, wedging her cheek into the fold of his crotch, rubbing. It takes a long moment to get over the paralysis and it's only when his cock starts to beat, thickening up, and his face flares with heat, that he finds his voice.

"Janey... honey –"

Her face stills, her chin digging into the tender place of his inner thigh.

And then she's rearing up on one arm, wiping her mouth, eyes creased shut.

"Oh, sorry," she says as she opens her sleepy eyes. She barely sees him and then she's drawing away. "I'm going to bed."

He lets out a long, shuddering breath. "O-okay," is all he can manage.


	10. Chapter 10

He dreams about her, about the way she moves through the kitchen for a glass of water, navigating with her hips; about the way she brushes past him on her way, her mouth finding his inexplicably bare shoulder, dragging exactly three kisses over the skin there. It shocks him awake, so he's blinking in the darkness, his heart doing these slithery wobbly leaps in his chest at the discovery of the hard heat between his thighs.

He's distracted during breakfast, distant during the day, until she actually does it later, except instead of her mouth it's her fingers striping up his shoulder as she walks by. He jolts so bad he spears himself with a fork.

In the evening, he forgoes his usual reading and tells her he's turning in early because of some fake task he pretends to have forgotten to do for C-sec in the morning. She pulls him in for a hug, a bit demanding, and her arms go around his neck, and she turns his face to his and presses her mouth into the wick of his, soft and clinging for a long moment. She lets him go as if nothing happened out of the ordinary and he disappears into the kitchen to pour himself a drink.

He doesn't have Liara's ability to dive into another's mind but she fairly reeks of it, wanting. And it's him she wants. The thought drops in him like a badly skipped stone and it's like he never thought of it that way before, or like he'd been skimming over the top of those thoughts and now he's suddenly down there.

What the hell do I do now ?

It clouds through him all day Thursday, while he's working, while he's scarfing down a midday meal in his desk, while Bailey stops by and tells him sourly that he looks like shit. He messages Jane that he's going to be home late and he eats in his office alone, takeout boxes wilting on his desk.

By the time he gets home she's fast asleep on the couch.

No matter the vividness of his night-terrors, the aftermath is always embarrassingly banal – strip off the wet things, toss down a towel, and shiver uncontrollably until the sweat cools on his skin. John usually dreamt about the stifling heat under the protective layers of his armor, sweat burning in his eyes as he crawled trying to disappear in to the ground with tracer rounds going over his head. His armor digging into his body creating expanding bruises he just ignored. He was able to crawl to a busted Turian combat car where he could take a few calculated shots into the enemy as his "sister" called them out. When Command believed they had been wore down enough he had to storm the building. What proceeded was a two-hour of room to room firefight to clean out an Alliance base.

That was his first mission. The time he killed. The first time he was truly and absolutely terrified.

Since he moved in, he's been spared the worst nightmares, but after the stress of the day and the responsive burning that has preoccupied him for endless hours, it's inevitable that very early that morning he rears up, soaked, freezing, and almost hyperventilating, gasping for breath as if he's just cracked up through the frozen rind of some pond.

This time, though, someone's there to grab for him. The bed bounces a bit, tips, and he blinks salty sweat away from his eyes and sees Jane on the edge of the mattress, leaning over him. He jerks back as her hands find his sides, but she's firm and while she helps him swing his legs over the side of the bed he hears her whispering it's okay, you're awake, you're okay John, you're okay, you're gonna be okay.

And then she's the one that peels off his sweat-soaked shirt, helps him out of bed with the brisk efficiency of a nurse, and leads him to the bathroom, her shoulder tucked under his arm and her one hand curled around his bare waist. As the sudden harsh light flares on he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror: his face looks gray and the deep circles under his eyes make him emaciated. She helps him sit down on the lid of the toilet, leaves and returns in a flurry with a fresh towel.

She doesn't speak as she helps towel his hair and pat his face dry. He's almost aware enough to feel ashamed at the way he leans into her hands, the way the shiver threads through his whole body when her palm spreads over the nape of his neck, the way his every nerve ending flares as she lets the towel drop and strokes long lines over his shoulders. But he keeps his eyes squeezed tight and lets her cradle his heavy head in her arms and tries not to tense up and yearn after her when she leaves him there.

She's gone and he can barely hear the shuffling and banging in the other room through the noise of his own pounding hearth. Shortly she's standing in the bathroom doorway again with her hands full of flatly folded clothes from his dresser drawers – pajama bottoms, a long-sleeved t-shirt, a pair of faded blue boxer-briefs tucked primly between. She pulls back out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

His head is throbbing. He rolls his pajama bottoms and boxers down and kicks them away from his ankles, bracing himself on the sink with both hands. He's still heaving a bit and the muscles in his shoulders and arms are leaping and jumping under his grayish, goose pimpled flesh. His hair is plastered to his forehead and there are unhealthy spots of color blotching over his face, and his eyelids look swollen and purplish, actually bruised. A glass stands on the counter and he fills it to the brim, drinks it in long aching gulps before cracking it down on the counter. He buries his face in the towel she brought and breathes out hard, trying to catch up with his pounding heart.

When he finally emerges, dry if not especially clean and clothed, he finds she's stripped his bed down and is in the process of pulling a clean sheet on over the mattress. He stands and watches awkwardly, pulling a hand through the still-damp hair at the back of his bare neck. When she's done she turns and pads barefoot across to her room, disappearing momentarily before returning with one of her own pillows. He watches, half-frozen, as she goes and tosses it on the bed.

She turns to him and he swallows. "Your pillows are soaked," she tells him, not quite looking at him. "You can borrow mine."

He lets out a long breath. "Oh, no – you don't have to…."

"I wasn't using it anyway," she says. "I never heard you come in. But I heard you dreaming."

He comes forward and shakily settles down on the edge of the bed. She stands watching him calmly.

"Sorry 'bout that," he mutters.

"At first, after everything was over," she tells him, "I was so afraid of what I would dream. My dreams were bad enough before. I used to have night terrors, too." She does look very awake and alert, but her arms are crossed over her stomach, as if she's withdrawing again like a mollusk into its shell. "Liara would help me clean up, before."

This is dangerous. His hand pulls down his face as if he could make it into a mask by sheer willpower. "Thank you. You didn't need to."

She comes forward and her knees are bumping against his. "She'd get in bed with me," she says, and he looks up at her, a ringing in his ears like a concussion grenade went off a second ago. "Help me fall asleep again. No more night-terrors."

He wets his lips with a suddenly-dry tongue. "Janey…."

"You have to get up early in the morning," she tells him, and her hand is on his chest, pushing him down. He scrambles back but she follows and even as he's trying to tell her no, her hands find his face, her thumbs stroking his forehead, her palms sliding down to scrape over his soft beard, and then back up again so her fingers could tangle in his hair. His lashes flicker down and he's squeezing his eyes shut so the crows' feet spring up at the corners, and he turns his head into her moving hand. The no melts out of him and the yes firms right up.

She doesn't speak but hums a little, stroking through his red, damp curls, sliding up beside him and encouraging him to turn over so that, holy shit, so that she's spooning him, pressing her wiry body up behind his, her knees slipping into the crook of his, her right arm going around his body to press into his sternum, press and stroke down and trail little circles over his ribs. And he feels her bare face warm against the back of his neck, the maddening flutter of her eyelashes on his skin.

He knows he's shivering, knows she can feel the fine vibration through his bones, and he hopes to god she thinks it's just aftereffects of the night-terror, and he hopes to god that's actually what it is. He tries not to press back into her too hard and disguises his attempt to melt into her as merely an attempt to get comfortable. He clears his throat and it sounds explosive in the quiet darkness.

"Are you," he begins, but she shushes him and nuzzles into his neck, hooking her arm around his torso, tracing with her finger.

He settles in, listening to her slow movements, feeling the tension in his own muscles release in little clicking bursts, only to ratchet back up a couple notches whenever she shifts behind him. The movement of her fingers slows, turns dreamy, and for a while he knows she's drifted off, but then she's awake again with a little jolt that makes his breath catch, and her fingers are turning those maddening circles on his abdomen once more.

"You wanna talk about it?" she murmurs, her knees hitching up a bit, and his lungs feel so tight he doesn't think he can talk about anything. And her fingers are doing little figure eights around his navel.

"About the nightmare," she presses.

He's able to shake his head. "N-no. I just want to get back to sleep."

Her hand finds its way under his shirt and then it's bare skin on skin, her hand going flat on his stomach for just a moment before resuming the tracing. But he can only revel in it for a moment before her fingers are slipping under the band of his shorts.

He freezes when he feels her running the pad of her thumb and then the nail over the rosy crenellations they left over his hip.

He should push her away, he knows he should, but he finds himself pushing into her touch instead, ever so slightly, his lower back flexing.

"Janey," he moans.

"I like... I like it when you call me that" she whispers, fingers curling downward.

He somehow he manages to pull away from her, rolling onto his stomach, crushing his erection against the mattress. Its not right. He knows this. She is his...mother? Sister? Too close for this, he knows that much. She isn't thinking straight. Some poor reaction to all the trauma she went through. He can't let her do this to herself. To them.

"Jane, I need to sleep," he says, his voice muffled in the pillow, not daring to address the trajectory of her fingers, what she did to him. What she was about to do.

He braces for her reaction.

She's stiffened up next to him and he feels the anger and hurt radiate off her in waves. He is terrified she will press the issue but mercifully, after a minute she climbs out of bed. He lets out a long shaky sigh as she disappears into her room.


End file.
